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Virgin Birth

(Text as at 29/04/2010 09:51:50)

*** THIS IS NOT THE LATEST VERSION OF THIS NOTE ***

Dear T. Crosthwaite,

Thanks for the references. I'm afraid my booklet on this topic was written nearly 20 years ago, and that since then my interests and affiliations have changed somewhat. It was about the time of writing that booklet that I was losing the conviction that a fundamentalist approach to Christianity could be maintained with intellectual integrity, though signs of this struggle didn't show in the booklet itself. The use of Isaiah 7:14 was a case in point, and I now agree with you that (if this is what you think) the text doesn't refer to the first century, but to a time hundreds of years earlier. However, it was standard sectarian exegetical practise in the first century to apply texts out of context to the then present time, so I don't think it was an underhand practise, just an unsound one.

I haven't studied the debate on the links you gave me (Link (Defunct) and Link (Defunct) and &Itemid=26) in any detail, but from a quick look I have three objections, or maybe two and a question.

Firstly, isn't the argument that Mary was a Levite unsound? If Mary really was betrothed to Joseph, and Joseph was of the Tribe of Judah, and (for the sake of the argument) assume that Mary really was of the Tribe of Levi, then the tribes can intermarry. At least I can take it that you believe that they can. But if the tribes can intermarry, then presumably Elizabeth needn't be a Levite, but could also be of the tribe of Judah and yet be married to a Levite. And - the important point - she could be of the tribe of Judah and yet still have Aaron as an ancestor; all it needs is for one of her (male) ancestors to have married a Levite. So if that's the case, then both Mary and Elizabeth could have been of the Tribe of Judah. How does that sound?

The important point is that is that tribe-membership is dominant on the male side, so some of your descendents can be "kidnapped" by another tribe - eg. if you are a Judahite, and your daughter marries a Levite, her children, and therefore some of your grand-children, will be Levites. So, even if Elizabeth was a Levite, she could still be the first cousin of a Judahite. Similarly, you can have ancestors belonging to different tribes to the one you yourself belong to - at least if inter-tribal unions are allowed.

I suppose you might argue that inter-tribal marriage is illegal. In that case, Mary - if a Levite - was acting illegally by trying to marry Joseph - a Judahite. And maybe in its own terms this is sustainable - who knows what a Levitical hussy already pregnant by some other Judahite might do? But Joseph is described as a righteous man, and wouldn't stand for any of that. But of course inter-tribal marriage wasn't illegal - Israelites were even allowed to marry non-Israelites (though not Canaanites; and the kings weren't supposed to marry foreigners, even though Solomon notoriously did). And there's that odd passage in Judges 21 where the other tribes swear an oath not to give their daughters as wives to Benjamites, which they wouldn't have had to swear unless such practices were normal; and then there's the continuation of the tale whereby the Benjamites get their non-Benjamite wives anyway, to avoid extinction.

Secondly, the bracketing in Luke 3:23 "He was (the son, so it was thought of Joseph,) the son of Heli, ...". That seems a text-wrench, if ever there was one. You could make Jesus the son of any of the unknowns in the list by appropriate bracketing (eg. "He was (the son, so it was thought of Joseph, the son of Heli,) the son of Matthat ..." would make jesus the som of Matthat. And I don't think the Greek will bear this construction anyway. The first "son" is the usual Greek word "huios", but the other occurrences are just the definite article in the genitive - "tou" - "the one of". This presupposes you know what sort of thing you're talking about, and if the clause was bracketed, you wouldn't - or at least not as clearly. I'm not an expert, so don't know, but it seems rather odd. And in any case you'd have thought that Luke would have been a bit more explicit if he was suggesting that Jesus really was conceived out of wedlock by a human father, and not just initially supposed by Joseph to have been (as Matthew 1:19 suggests).

Finally, what's all this about descendents of Jeconiah (Jehoiachin) not being eligible for kingship? I could only see some vague reference to something Ambrose wrote. Do you have any evidence?

As a matter of interest, why do you try to get the texts to say something other than what they appear to be saying (if not particularly stressing). Why not adopt the usual humanist line that it's a load of old superstition, or the cultural-relativist line that it was all sensible stuff in its context, but now we know better, or at least think differently? Is Jesus still important to you in some way, so that you need the New Testament to tell you something about him as there's so little attestation elsewhere? What sort of person do you think he was?

This Note is currently work in progress¹.